Sunday, 25 November 2012

Farthest North and Farthest South #1: Spectres from the sea

Having recently visited the Scott
Polar Museum in Cambridge (no idea why I haven't done this before,
having lived in the city for eight years) I was reminded that one of my on-off
obsessions is with the North and South Poles and their environs. I'm not quite
sure why, and having given the matter a little consideration, I think it's
something to do with storytelling. As an historian, I'm trained to unravel and
unpick stories, to scrutinise the aspects that give them the most weight, and
while it would be hard to argue that, for example, the history of Antarctic
exploration has been entirely unbiased - Max Jones's The Last Great Quest is
devoted solely to the history of the rewriting of Scott's reputation after his death in 1911 - there is something about it that lends itself to
narrative. For me, the fact that the poles are uninhabited means that I can
engage with the quests of explorers like Scott in an easier way than I can
relate to other nineteenth and early-twentieth century explorers, who tended to
leave a trail of destruction through local peoples in their wake. Of course,
this does not mean there are no moral questions to ask about polar exploration
- the environmental impact is the first consideration that springs to mind -
but there's something wonderfully refreshing about being able to engage with a
good story like the exploits of Scott and Shackleton again, without having to
worry about the other sides.

And this long-winded introduction is to say that
I'm following up my entirely non-random and well-planned Tigers series
with another series of reviews on the far north and far south. I've decided to
begin with a book I recently re-read after reading it for the first time in the
Scottish Highlands a few years ago - which worked remarkably well given the
long, bright evenings, the lack of electricity in the house I was staying in,
and its isolated location. Somewhat chilling... (I've since read Sarah Moss's
second novel, Night Waking, which is another frustrating mix of flaws
and brilliance - I reviewed it briefly here).

Cold Earth, her debut
novel, starts extremely well but trails off somewhat about halfway through,
although an element of tension is maintained until the (rather rushed) ending.
The central - and immediately intriguing - idea is that a group of British and
American archaeologists, Nina, Ruth, Jim, Catriona, Yianni and Ben, are
excavating a Viking settlement on the isolated coast of West Greenland. The
site in question was abandoned by the early settlers for debatable reasons; was
it plague, raiders, or climate change that drove them away? However, these
ancient events are inadvertently echoed by the archeologists themselves when an
epidemic back home leaves them entirely cut off, running out of food as winter
and darkness draw in. As I noted above, the beginning of the novel is
masterly. Nina, who narrates first, is a brilliantly drawn, if not exactly
likeable, character, and her paranoid slant on the dig provides a wonderfully
atmospheric opening scarier than the vast majority of ghost stories I've read,
as she dreams of the early settlers surrounding their camp in the weirdly light
Greenlandic nights. Unfortunately, the rest of the book suffers from major
problems with pacing. When the narration abruptly switches to Ruth, who is the
most pragmatic of the group and openly disgusted with Nina's hysterics, much of
the narrative drive is lost. Although Ruth is an equally well-drawn character,
and the personality clash between her and Nina works well as the internal
politics of the group begin to take shape, her refusal to believe in
Greenlandic ghosts robs Nina's section of much of its impact. This is also due
to the form of the novel as a whole. It's presented as a collection of 'last
letters home' written by the archaeologists, but unfortunately this conceit
becomes increasingly contrived, as a number of the 'letters' were clearly
written before the danger became apparent, and it seems to me that it would
have been better to have kept it as a straightforward set of switching
narratives, which would have allowed more flexibility to interperse sections of
Nina's narration with Ruth's, for example.

The second half of the novel is
also oddly paced. The major plot point - the isolation of the group from
civilisation - doesn't kick in until very late in the day, although the scene
narrated by Jim where they wait for a plane that never comes is, again,
wonderfully and creepily written. Although the lengthening nights and Arctic
landscape - along with Ruth's mediations on death - are continually used to
good effect, the novel never really regains its momentum, and wraps up
incredibly quickly at the end with short sections from Catriona, Ben and
Yianni, which feel frustratingly unbalanced compared to the much longer
narratives from the first three characters. I was left with the impression that
the book could have been significantly longer, and that the male characters, in
particular, were left rather underdeveloped.

However, this is perhaps an
overly critical take so far - what the novel does do, it does very well, and
I'm perhaps being more critical than is fair because it could so easily have
been really brilliant, rather than just good. Nina, Ruth, and even Catriona,
who gets far less page time, are all vividly depicted, and the dialogue is
often amusingly biting as the squabbling between the characters increases. At
one point Nina - who fancies herself well-travelled - and Ben have this telling
exchange over passports;

'Nina looked up.

"Gosh, that looks very new
and shiny. Mine's in rags."

"Yeah... The other one went through the
wash."

"Oh."

The atmosphere is genuinely chilling, and difficult to shake off after finishing the book, and the details of early
Viking settlements in Greenland are fascinating - Moss manages to filter
through a lot of information without ever including anything that seems
extraneous. And, despite the uneven pace, it's still hard to put down, and I
found myself being continously drawn back to the story. All in all, then, an
impressive debut - although Night Waking solved some of its problems
while creating others. I'm looking forward to checking out Moss's new
non-fiction book, Names for the Sea, which deals with her time living in
Reykjavik, and possibly her earlier academic work, The Frozen Ship, on
the development of discourses on the Arctic and Antarctic. In the meantime,
this series will continue next Sunday when I review two non-fiction books on
Antarctica.

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ABOUT ME

I'm a Stipendiary Lecturer in History at St Anne's College, Oxford, and am also currently writing a novel (or three) in my 'spare time'. I like books, decaf coffee and cocktails, particularly dry martinis.